When Classical Music Is the Wrong Choice

The New York City-based street theater group Improv Everywhere has produced a very popular video (it went up on YouTube on 9/24, 2013, and had more than a million views only 6 days later) called Conduct Us. If you haven't seen it already, take a look...

This video represents a missed opportunity for something truly joyous and wonderful. This could have been great. That is, if they hadn't done it with classically trained musicians playing a piece from the European classical repertoire.

It's very telling that the video is, for the most part, a recording of the one piece the orchestra must've played over and over that day, with the various "conductors" edited in at any given point, while the music simply continues. It just really drives home the fact that these musicians were simply playing the piece, with nominal to non-existent response in any meaningful way to the conducting. The musicians, of course, are skillful and can play this piece very well, but the whole thing is really just an empty exercise. A smile-inducing diversion for passersby and no doubt a bit of fun for the folks who stepped up and waved the stick, but beyond that, essentially meaningless.

Which is all the more tragic when you consider that New York City is full to bursting with brilliant improvising musicians who COULD actually respond to what the off-the-street conductors do! Like say, any number of the musicians who took part in Butch Morris's "Conduction" pieces over the years. It would be so easy to put together a group of players in NYC who would blow people's minds when these guest conductors stepped up to lead them. It would be so, SO much better than this that, well, there'd be no comparison, really.

Now, some might call me grumpy, curmudgeonly, and accuse me of raining on a nice little parade. But, really, it irks me how the European classical tradition is still the default, go-to idea for something like this. It is SO inferior, in this context, to what a group of good improvisors from the worlds of jazz and free improv could do.

So, note to Improv Everywhere: do this again, and call Mr. William Parker to put an ensemble together for it. It's gonna blow this classical shit right outta the water. (Samm Bennett - September 30, 2013)